Well another baseball season for Grant, the hitter is over. 

Each season brings new experiences with new coaches and new team-mates. 

This year Grant was on the Lookouts with Rory S.   Rory was a good coach who let the kids play lots of positions during the season and tightened up the lineup (having the better kids infield) during the end of the season and playoffs.   He was also a coach that believed in swinging the bat.  Grant has been on teams with coaches that preached - "Stand up there and wait for the walk"  and coaches that say "Swing away",   we prefer coaches that let you swing away.

When you swing away, you usually start off the season slow, because the kids do not hit at the beginning of the season.  The slow bats in conjunction with letting everyone get equal playing time had us off to a slow start (1-6 through the first 7).   But as the season progressed we got better at hitting, our pitchers became more accurate and we started to get a better infield and ended the season very strong (6-7 overall).

We won the first playoff game against a team that only hit 2 times, but stood up there for a lot of walks.   We came back from a 9-1 2nd inning deficit to pull it out on the back of strong hitting..

The second playoff game, we lost in a heart-breaker by one point in the last inning.   Grant felt bad because he was the catcher when the winning run stole home.   But he was the only player to hit 3-for-3 in the game and had throw someone out stealing 2nd,  so I felt he had done more than his share to get the victory..   I had been practicing hitting with Grant every night for the past 3 weeks and have told him and Debra if it was two outs, one point down and I could put anyone up - I would want Grant to be batting.... I stand by that.  But if we are up by one, I do not want Grant catching, his catching is just not up to the pressure.   I think he was the best catcher available and he did alright, and I do not blame him for the loss.  It was team loss, we just did not have the pitching or fielding to hold them..

This was the first year Debra was team-mom.  She hesitated, now knowing if she would have to be team mom for my T-Ball team. But once I had a team-mom she tookover as the Look-out team mom..   She did good, keeping everyone in line and informed...

As far as Grant's play this season, it was pretty good.   On offense he became quite a hitter and on defense he took on a new position of catcher.

Since machine pitch, Grant has been Mr. Consistency.  He had a machine-pitch season were he was the only one to not get a strike out the entire season. This year he had the most hits of anyone on the team.   In the last five games, he got on base every bat, but once, through walks or hits.  Again, he was reliable..

But we also added a little power to his swing.  In the spring last year and the beginning of this year, all his hits would end up in the short stop or second baseman's glove as a grounder.    Through lots of balls at the back of Oyster Creek and wiffle balls at night, he developed a bit more power.   As the season progressed more and more of his balls landed in the outfield.  More and more he ended up with stand up singles and doubles   instead of getting out or on-by-error.   Until the last 3 games when he stepped up to the plate after his first bat and you heard music to a father's ears as the other coaches say "back up outfield, look alive".  When I was in little league all I heard when I got up was "come on in outfield".

Grants favorite time this year was base running.  He had a habit of going to second almost every time he hit, and about half the time that he walked.   You can safely make it to second most of the time in this league.  His favorite memory of the year was his second time batting in the last game.   A friend of his from school said - he is going to go to second, he always goes to second...and sure enough he hit to the shallow infield which most people would have gotten a single on and ended up and second - his friend was "I told ya'll so".     Rory had him leading off most the last half the season because of his bat and his baserunning..

Several of the leagues better pitchers, did not play in fall-ball.  Between football and select baseball they chose not play little league in the fall.   We wonder how well Grant will do in the spring as the faster more accurate pitchers come back from their little league sabbatical..

In the field, Grant tried catching with mixed success.  He was a good machine-pitch catcher, but then all you had to do was stop the ball and they were always strikes. He had not caught in kid pitch, and it is a whole new game.   With wild pitches, kids stealing even if you caught the ball, and kids stealing home.    Grant did pretty good, he was excellent at hustling.  Could throw the ball pretty good the bases.  But he did not always stop the ball as well as other kids <- which is kinda the catchers job.   Several of our pitchers were less than accurate, which made his job a bit harder.   

There is a new little league rule that after you pitch, you can not catch for that game - it is in place to save the kids arm.  But that limited your catchers.  Our best catchers were also our best pitchers, and once they pitched you had to put in you less-experience catcher which included Grant.  So he was in quite a bit more than his skill-set would have warranted.

His best and worse experience came in the final inning on the playoffs.  He threw a player out trying to steal second, this did not happen very often at this age (when it happened it was the most excited I had ever seen Rory).    He got close within inches of throwing out two other people.  He was doing great.  But at the end of the inning, he missed a key ball and let the winning run score.  It was such a let-down.  I am not sure he ever want to catch again, he just left his left-handed catcher glove sitting there like he did not want it anymore and refused to put it in his bat bag..

We really enjoyed this season more than any other.  Even those which we won the championship.   We liked our coach, we liked the team-mates, I liked the other dads,  and Debra liked the other moms.    The team got better as we went on and we were hitters and it kept the game exciting.  Grant had a great season, and we felt like he played a huge role in the victories...